STORRS — Breanna Stewart, the best player in America, was talking about messages. The message Geno Auriemma sent Morgan Tuck, Kiah Stokes and Stewart with love not-so-tender in Elvis Presley's hometown Saturday. The message the three intended to return to their Hall of Fame coach at practice Sunday and again Monday night in the battle between the top two women's basketball teams in the nation.

"We want to come out and, I guess, send him back a message," Stewart said. "It helps that South Carolina is [next]. What he said we were, that's not the type of players we are."

A message? Auriemma chuckled.

"I just hope it's not in a bottle and I get it three years from now floating up to my house on Long Island Sound in Niantic," he said. "I hope it's more immediate."

Auriemma had to choke back his emotions at one point Sunday, and it had nothing to do with benching Stewart in the first half at Memphis and keeping her there the rest of the game. He choked up as he spoke about the passing of legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith at age 83 earlier in the day.

STORRS — South Carolina plays the most important women's basketball game in its history Monday at Gampel Pavilion. There can be no doubt about that.

Think back 20 years to the frenzy surrounding UConn's wrangle with iconic Tennessee on Jan. 16, 1995. There was so much to gain for the Huskies, most...

STORRS — South Carolina plays the most important women's basketball game in its history Monday at Gampel Pavilion. There can be no doubt about that.

Think back 20 years to the frenzy surrounding UConn's wrangle with iconic Tennessee on Jan. 16, 1995. There was so much to gain for the Huskies, most...

(JOHN ALTAVILLA)

"We're getting old," Auriemma, 60, said softly.

It has long been said Smith was the only one who could hold Michael Jordan under 20 points. Such is the power and design of a legendary college coach. It is no stretch to assert Auriemma is only one who could hold Stewart to four points and five minutes played in a college game.

Was Auriemma harsh in pulling Tuck after only four minutes and allowing his three frontcourt players to play a collective 17 minutes? Absolutely. Was he too harsh? Many in a fan base built on love for their girls and 46-point routs that the Memphis game eventually became, would insist, yes, it was too harsh. After all, you mess with Stewie and you're messing with the crown jewel.

After seeing Auriemma go at it with Svetlana Abrosimova among others over the years, I am not nearly as alarmed. He did it to motivate them. Messages sent, of course, are only as good as messages received, and how Stewart and the other two respond against No. 1 South Carolina in Gampel Pavilion will tell us what we need to know about their fortitude and their relationship with their coach.

For what it's worth, Stewart said her message back to Auriemma isn't intended to be only for Monday night. It will be for the rest of the season and the rest of the time she's at UConn. For what it's worth, Auriemma insists he isn't into "this message thing."

"I explained it to them yesterday, I explained it to them again today, I'm not into messages," Auriemma said. "Look, it's not easy playing here. It's not easy, not for the reasons people think. There's no Machiavellian things going on in our office where we're like, 'Hey, how can we come up with this diabolical plan to make these guys better.'

"The reason it's not easy to play here is because the standard, the bar is set so high that I think it affects all of us. It affects us as coaches. We never want to let our guard done. We never want the bar to be lowered. It affects the players that the bar is set so high that most of the time, it's hard to get there."

Auriemma said he talks all the time, especially with his great players, about that bar.

"Do you want to win because the other team sucks?" Auriemma said. "Or do you want to win because you are really, really good? If you're really, really good and you play great, the opponent doesn't matter. If you're going to show up, take a chance your talent is enough, you're going to go through the motions a little bit, a little bit bored or you're a little bit less than who you are, then I got a problem with that."

Obviously, down 12-10 in the first half to an inferior team, Auriemma had a problem.

"There wasn't a conversation," Tuck said. "We were ready to go back in, but it didn't happen. We were upset with ourselves. I think that was the biggest emotion."

"You want to come out and Morgan and I and Kiah didn't have the approach Coach wanted us to — understandable," Stewart said. "The message was sent. We got the message."

Even if Auriemma doesn't want to use that word.

"They're strong mentally," Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis said. "They're going to come back fighting. I think it motivated the people who were forced to play to have confidence in themselves. It also lit a fire until Stewie, Tuck and Kiah and told them we need you guys to be here all the time and not just whenever you feel like it."

How's that for some ABCs there from KML?

"Coach said it was Cincinnati and Temple, too," Stewart sad. "It didn't really feel like it was anything crazy. Temple, we just couldn't make any shots. Temple was just ugly. Cincinnati, we got off to a slow start and yeah, Morgan and myself, we're to blame for that. We're supposed to be leaders setting the tone for the rest of the team.

"Obviously, it's a motivating thing whether he means to do it or not. Nobody wants to sit on the bench. That's point-blank. If that means he's motivating us to have a chip on our shoulder [Monday], all right. I think South Carolina is a game no matter what, you're going to be motivated."

Auriemma loves the idea of a No. 1-No. 2 game in February. No national championships will be won or lost, but too many schools shy away from late-season nonconference matchups because they fear the fallout. For Auriemma, it is a chance to adjust on the fly against an unfamiliar opponent like in the NCAA Tournament.

"But if you're waiting for South Carolina or Notre Dame or Stanford [as a player], then you are less than who you are," Auriemma said. "The great ones don't play for that reason. I just told them. 'You want to be great against the lesser teams? Go out, get your triple-double in 20 minutes, come to the bench and go, 'Gabby, your turn.' Don't be less than who you are. It wasn't punishment. Punishment would have been to make them play [Saturday]. If you're going to be less than who I think you are, there's not point in playing."

There are few things in sports more fascinating than coaching psychology. Auriemma spoke about coaching at Virginia as a women's assistant in the early 1980s and listening through the walls of the soccer office next to the visitor's locker room to hear Smith motivate his Carolina men's teams. This was at a time when Carolina had guys like Jordan and Sam Perkins and James Worthy. Auriemma said he thought he had died and gone to basketball heaven.

He finally got to meet Smith years later on a Nike trip in California. Smith asked him to play the exclusive Cypress Point golf course with Bobby Cremins and Roy Williams. Williams got sick and couldn't play. Auriemma and Cremins showed up in shorts and were promptly told they weren't allowed to play. Cremins, a longtime ACC rival, was convinced Smith set them up. They played in caddy rain gear.

The threesome started on the par-5 10th hole. Auriemma drove down the middle of the fairway, hit a 4-wood on the green and sank a putt for an eagle.

"I've never seen somebody more excited for something somebody else did in my life," Auriemma said. "He ended up winning a lot of money that day. Even at his age, he was a competitive sucker. But every time I'd see him afterward, he'd tell everybody sitting around about that eagle, just to make me feel good. To this day, I take that with me about Dean Smith."

That was his beauty. On the day he died, the stories told and retold of what Smith did off the court with civil rights, with lifelong relationships, with a memory so giving … until that legendary memory abandoned him … matched the stories of what he did on the court. It would bring Auriemma back to his own mortality, to his own driving force.

"Nobody in the history of athletics or academics has ever got less out of their ability than me from the time I was in the 10th grade," Auriemma said. "I just hate it when I see it in other people, and I'm going to prevent it to the best of my ability."